Marketers Ruin Everything

Remember when email was cool?

Before everyone had an email address. Before everyone had even heard of email.

The really, really cool kids had “@well.com” email addresses. (That’s WELL as in “Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link.”) The rest of us had addresses like [email protected]. Then there was the huge influx of @aol.com addresses and email wasn’t just for tech geeks anymore.

And then came the marketers.

Oh, it started out well enough. Legitimate offers with at least some relevance to your interests. (Because they found you on, say, that underwater basketweaving forum you loved to hang out in.)

After a while, we moved into “tragedy of the commons” territory, with all of us getting way more promotional messages than email we really wanted. Little did we know how good we had it.

Sure, it was annoying to get repeated come-ons from that place where you bought a fruit basket for your grandparents once 3 years ago. That still happens, but there was nothing like all these Nigerian princes, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, and warnings that we need to log into our PayPal account right now to keep our car’s warranty current …

That evolution took shape over many years. Today, the same thing happens in weeks. Take Clubhouse, for example. It seemingly went from so cool you couldn’t get an invite to nothing-but-noise in less than a month.

I’m exaggerating, of course, about both the speed with which it’s changed and about the value of the content. Clubhouse is about 10 months old, not 10 weeks, and there is still great content to be found there. It just takes more sifting than it used to.

Looking at Clubhouse from a broader marketing perspective, it’s really just one more example of the importance of being willing to try new ideas. Remember, there was a point where email seemed, well, pointless for all but a small subset of marketers. Can you imagine marketing without email today?

I don’t have any way to predict whether Clubhouse will survive – or become as indispensable and infuriating as email – but I certainly want to know my way around it as it matures.

More importantly, I hope you’ll join me in the spirit of exploration and experimentation that marketing all but requires today. Yes, things come at us so quickly it can be hard to wrap our heads around their potential value. But they come at us with very little outside expense. No long lead times or printing and mailing expenses. Just you, your mobile device, an investment of some of your (valuable) time, and a willingness to risk looking a little silly while you’re learning.

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